7 Biggest Mistakes People Make Correcting Posture

1. Starting too late2. Forgetting lifestyle3. Correcting posture before losing weight4. Not understanding the real cause 5. Wrong treatment approach6. Masking the problem7. Giving up

DisclaimerBefore embarking on any exercise programme, it is your responsibility to discuss it with your doctor. If you think you may have a medical emergency, call your doctor immediately. Except as expressly stated, Paula Moore The Chiropractor does not recommend or endorse any specific tests, physicians, products, procedures, opinions, or other information that may be mentioned is this ebook. Reliance on any information in this book is solely at your own risk.

Note: This is for informational purposes only. Health practitioners cannot provide a diagnosis or individual treatment advice via e-mail. Please consult your physician about your specific health care concerns.

First published in Great Britain 2012by Paula Moore

Illustrations: Paula Moore Photography: Paula MooreVideos: Paula Moore & posturevideos.com

Copyright © 2011 Paula Moore

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher.

1 Starting Too Late

This is probably the biggest problem most of you will have, for the simple reason that you are

motivated to make change when you have pain and not so motivated when you don't. If I could

stress one point, one very crucial point-it's don't wait for the pain!

By the time most of you begin to have symptoms (aches, pains, stiffness), the problem is more

chronic than you likely realise. You may think your problem just started but for most of you, I can

assure you it probably hasn't.

Sarcopenia

Morning stiffness is a sign of sarcopenia. If you are over 25, sarcopenia (flesh loss) has already

begun. Yikes, sounds scary but it's not really. Sarcopenia is the degenerative loss of skeletal muscle

mass and strength associated with ageing.

The amount of sarcopenia depends on how regular and lifelong your exercise has been. Due to our

increasingly diminishing physical activity and increasing longevity (we're living too darn long),

sarcopenia is a real concern. Sarcopenia may progress to the point where an older person loses the

ability to live independently as this condition is linked with poor balance, walking speed, falls and

broken bones. Sarcopenia results in a significant amount of frailty in the elderly.

Wear and Tear

If you feel stiff when you wake in the mornings you may already have osteoarthritis (wear and

tear). During the night you gain height as the spongy discs between your vertebrae reabsorb water.

All the holding elements, like ligaments and tendons become taught. When you wake, everything is

taught and you feel stiff. After a short while (30-60 minutes), the compression of being upright

squeezes the water out of the discs and you lose some height and become more supple again.

If however, you notice your stiffness persisting throughout the day or is particularly significant in

the mornings, you may already have some wear in the cartilage discs, making your morning

stiffness more noticeable.

It is much easier to make changes to your posture before you have any osteoarthritis. Sadly, so

many of my clients (often only 40, 50 or 60) say to me they wish they had begun addressing their

posture many, many years ago. Don't wait. Start now!

2 Forgetting Lifestyle

Many of you will take yourself to see a health practitioner for your posture concerns. When you are

asked about what you think may be the cause of your problem, the majority of you will consider

only the physical causes. You may say something like: I slept funny, I didn't do anything, I have a

weak back, I had a long drive, I was gardening, I twisted, lifted, bent, carried etc. etc. etc.

Now all of the above reasons may in fact be perfectly valid but I want to suggest that you may just

be missing the point. Most posture trouble, most aches and pains are so much more than just the

physical. By all means you need to recount all the past accidents you've had, the bad posture habits

you have, if you have a desk or manual job or had a recent trauma but you mustn't overlook the

important role your lifestyle plays.

Physical Stress

Some of the types of physical stress that may have lead up to your current situation can include a

difficult birth (forceps, vacuum delivery, cord around your neck), falls as a child, falls from a

height, falls down stairs, broken bones, car accidents and difficult pregnancies to name just a

handful. Especially important are all the accidents you walked away from because you didn't get

hurt. Think again.

Chemical Stress

I always ask my clients about the amount of chemical stress. Often you may find yourself

wondering what relevance the seven teas a day has to your posture. Your body chemistry is crucial

to your posture. Remember your body is literally made of the food and drink you put into it.

Garbage in, garbage out, I'm fond of saying.

Chemicals important to the health of your bones: Caffeine, sugar, protein, acid foods, alcohol and

nicotine to name but a few. Other chemicals to consider are the cosmetics you use on your body, the

cleaning products in your house, your detergents, the area you live, the water you drink and the air

in your office. I think you can see what I'm getting at. How aware are you of the chemicals you use?

Emotional Stress

When asking my clients about their emotional stress I usually have them rate it as minimal,

moderate or severe. What level is yours? How much emotional stress you have will vary depending

on your support network, whether you enjoy your work, your ability to slow down, correct

breathing and your ability to express your emotions. Obviously this list could be much larger.

If your physical, chemical and emotional stress is addressed, I believe you have a much better

chance of getting the kind of permanent results with your posture, that I'm certain you'd like to

achieve.

3 Correcting Posture Before Losing Weight

It always warms my heart to see a larger person willing to exercise, despite the extra effort, extra

discomfort and unkind stares that often go along with being overweight. So many of my larger

clients have the ongoing frustration, when trying to lose weight, that it hurts to exercise and that

even when eating an ordinary healthy diet, they still don't lose weight.

I often explain to these clients that losing weight is difficult because their body metabolism has

slowed down over time. That is why even when they eat the same food as someone of smaller size,

they don't seem to lose weight. This is extremely frustrating when you put that together with the

general lack of empathy society has for larger people.

Gaining weight comes with many obvious health concerns:

• Type 2 Diabetes

• Coronary Heart Disease and Stroke

• Metabolic Syndrome

• Cancer

• Sleep Apnoea

• Osteoarthritis

• Gallbladder Disease

• Fatty Liver Disease

• Pregnancy Complications

(Source: Weight Control Information Network)

From a chiropractic perspective, there are concerns about how your weight gain affects your posture

and spinal health. Some postures associated with being overweight include:

• increased lordosis (sway back)

• Forward Head Posture

• fatty neck lump

• round shoulders

• hyperkyphosis (similar in appearance to a Dowager's Hump but not the same)

• worn spinal discs

• chronic low back pain

• worn knee joints

So many of you will go to your health practitioner for help with some of the above issues. The

problem is that although treatment can often reduce or eliminate your pain, it is very likely to return

unless your weight is addressed.

I am not keen on beginning a posture rehab program without addressing your weight first. The

amount of weight I am referring to is approximately 14 Lbs or 1 stone in the UK. If it is less than

this amount it is usually easier to reset your metabolism.

4 Not Understanding The Real Cause

I understand that there is something about today's sedentary lifestyle that makes it hard to have

good posture and that if you have bad posture, you worry about looking unattractive. Many people

with bad posture often develop early arthritis and as a result feel much older than their 30 or 40

years. If this is you, I understand that you want to be active but it hurts. You feel worn out. You may

already have tried several different types of treatment and various exercise regimes but when you

look in the mirror, you see little if any change.

Functional Vs. Structural Problems

Chances are good that if you have been everywhere and tried everything with little if any change to

your symptoms and posture, then you may have only been given functional exercises. Functional

rehabilitation exercises improve your general range of movement (you couldn't turn your head very

far and now you can), your strength, balance and flexibility. While these elements are very

important they may be missing the mark.

Functional exercises may be ignoring the underlying cause of your bad posture-the alignment and

curves in your spine. Functional exercises will continue to make strong muscles strong and often

leave weak muscles weaker when you have a posture that isn't in ideal balance.

Functional (generic) exercises work really well for someone like this, whose body has good

symmetry. If however, you give the same functional exercises to someone with asymmetry (like the

woman below), you make her strong muscles stronger and her weak muscles weaker, perpetuating

the unbalanced posture. Not good!

Give the same functional exercises to the second woman and she will experience ongoing

frustration with little change to her posture over time. This woman needs to understand that her

posture is the result of structural problems. Once her specific posture issues are determined with a

head-to-toe Posture Analysis, a tailored program of correction can then be provided.

5 Wrong Treatment Approach

A new client comes in to see me having spent years and probably hundreds if not thousands on

attempting to correct their posture. They still have the symptoms they had five years ago and very

likely the exact same posture issue. Sound familiar?

This is so frustrating to me but I understand why this is happening. There are very few health care

professionals who have studied the geometry of the spine. Most health care professionals who learn

about posture learn about the low shoulder, the forward head, the sway back, the weak core but few

correlate those observations with what lies underneath-your spine and nerve system.

To understand the runnings of your car, you wouldn't make a diagnosis on the rattle you hear by

studying only how the car drives or how it looks on the outside, you would look under the hood at

the engine. If you want to understand a long-standing posture issue that refuses to change, you must

look to the spine. The only way to fully see the structure of the spine (I don't care how gifted your

practitioner is with touch) is to take a picture-an x-ray.

what you don't see on the outside

Not all of you will need an x-ray, especially if you look like the first woman in the images above. If

you look like the second woman and have had years of ongoing trouble without change (despite

seeing numerous health care practitioners) then I am quite likely to take an x-ray.

This is where the problem exists. Few healthcare practitioners have the qualifications to take or read

x-rays and often those who do, believe there is no real benefit to seeing the wear and tear because

they already know it is there. The point is, there is a lot more information to be gained by x-ray

examination then simply diagnosing whether or not you have wear and tear.

Case Study

I was 28 years old and in Chiropractic university when I had an x-ray taken of my low back and

pelvis. What we found was very interesting indeed-my right leg was 1cm shorter than my left and as

a result I had a short leg scoliosis. I very quickly understood my years of one-sided low back pain. I

began using a heel lift to artificially balance my pelvis and I can happily say, this sorted out my

lower back issue.

my scoliosis and then straight with use of a heel lift

The information about my leg lengths was gained using mathematical measurements from my x-

rays. Chiropractors are trained to take and read x-rays and carry out specific mathematical

measurements in this way. This is something only chiropractors do regularly and I believe it can be

a very important part of understanding the underlying cause of many musculo-skeletal problems. I

wouldn't practice without access to x-ray examination.

6 Masking The Problem

As far as I am concerned pain killers are a last...last...LAST resort. Please do not tell me you had to

take something. Whose body is it anyway? If you took something, it wasn't because you had to, it is

because you chose to. This is a very important distinction.

I also really understand why you take them. You don't know what else to do. No one has helped so

far, so why would you believe it will get any better. That is really understandable. I do understand.

Make Friends With Your Pain

This may be a strange concept for some of you but I encourage you to make

friends with your pain. Pain isn't bad. Pain is simply the activation of specialised

nerves. These nerves respond to changes in our environment (temperature change,

physical or mechanical change and chemical change) and then send signals to the

brain and spinal cord so we can take appropriate action.

If you put your hand near something hot, your pain nerves for temperature fire off sending a

message to your spinal cord which send a message back to your hand and you move it away from

the potentially dangerous hot burner.

Pain is good. Do you know what the first sign of a heart attack is? The heart attack. Or, for a few of

you lucky enough to have pain, maybe some arm pain. You need to understand that your body is

communicating when it has a pain. The last thing you want to do is suppress your body-in a sense,

shutting it up.

What is your body saying? Get interested. Be fascinated by your wonderful functioning body. What

is your headache saying? Drink some water, move my body, take a break, I have a virus, there are

chemicals around me, my posture needs attention, I'm hungry.

When you first begin this process, it will be challenging. If you are used to reaching for the pain

killers your brain will scream at you to take them. You may even hear yourself saying: I tried for a

while but then I had to take something. Watch these words closely (HAD TO). You rarely have to

do anything, unless someone is forcing a pill down your throat, you need to really get that you

choose whether or not to medicate your pain.

In my new book The Posture Doctor (uk) or from amazon.com you will learn about the dangers of

suppressing your pain and then get ready to re-set your pain threshold – I teach you how!

7 Giving Up

We have all done this; it is called being human. The worst part of giving up, isn't that you gave up,

it is that you didn't re-commit to whatever it was you said you were committed to in the first place-

correcting your posture.

It isn't easy to stay committed to something when you don't see immediate results. I know - It took

me some time working on my posture before I was content but then again I am a total posture geek

and I don't advise you are as tough on yourself with your own posture goals.

Whenever I have achieved something really worthwhile or particularly challenging in my life, there

has always been one common denominator - I've had support. In fact, I'm currently writing a new

book to help people just like you. Those who are unhappy about having unattractive, painful posture

and want a body they love. I'm writing this book in the company of 60 other authors (writing their

own books) under the watchful eye of a terrific book coach.

If you have enjoyed this free e book and would more support, then take a look at some of my

products and services below:

If you have already been everywhere and tried everything and still see no results with your posture,

you may want to ask for support – that is why I added the Skype Consultation – so you can get your

posture questions answered. Posture correction isn't a quick fix; it is a lifetime commitment to your

health and well-being.

“It's not what you are that holds you back; it's what you think you are not.” Denis Waitley

8 Not Contacting Me

This is possibly the biggest mistake that you may make when correcting your

posture. I understand what it is to have unattractive, painful posture because I

had it and corrected it. I now have a body that really works for me. I have

developed techniques over eleven years in private practice as a doctor of

chiropractic and using my specialist qualification as a Fellow in the field of

posture science. It has now been over fifteen years since I've taken a single

pain killer or any form of medication.

I know how to correct posture and I'm am known for helping people get impossible results that last

and my absolute mission is to leave you oozing posture confidence!

Other products:

Posture Analysis

Questions? drop me an email. I answer everyone and quickly!